V-ed/ to be V-ed

Nice to see you, Clive.
From A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, I once learned something like:
The car repaired by that mechanic... can mean one of these:
1# The car will be repaired by that mechanic...
2# The car is repaired by that mechanic...
3#The car was repaired by that mechanic...
And: The time to go is July.

Still, I would like to know if this makes sense:
“ It's such a nice place,” Mother said as she sat at the table to be reserved for customers. correspondences ......at the table which should be reserved for customers.

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norwolfas she sat at the table____ for customers

to be reserved is grammatical, but it doesn't have the same meaning, as explained above.

To come to the correct conclusion that reserved is the correct answer, you need to use common sense to see that the writer has no reason to tell us readers that the table was going to be reserved after

Hi,

In that kind of example, the tense of the main verb indicates the meaning.
eg The car (to be) repaired by that mechanic will be ready next Tuesday.
eg The car repaired by that mechanic was picked up by the customer last Tuesday.

she sat at the table reserved for customers. This suggests the table was always reserved for customers. This seems to me th

Great! Thank you, Clive and Jim.

Does this work?
“ It’s such a nice place.,” Mother said as she sat at the table to have been reserved for customers.

norwolfthe table to have been reserved for customers

We can assign a meaning to it, but it is so excessively awkward that it really should not be used. It's better to make the situation more explicit by adding a few more words.

the table that was supposed to have been reserved for customers

And rephrasing would be even better: